I would have asked this in my previous thread, but it was closed by Cane2TheLeft almost immediately.

So I'm forced to ask this question (the question is in the title) in a new thread. Right now I've ingested a huge amount of benzoes. We are talking maybe 72mg bromazepamand 15-20mg flunitrazepam. No, I'm not exaggerating; I'm looking at the wrappers right now.

So to better phrase my question: what signs can sober people see that would reveal that a person on benzos is intoxicated? I mean, I feel quite sober. My memory is perhaps not at it's best right now, but people can't see that, especially strangers. I'm looking for physical signs aswell as psychological.

And one last note. This forum is written in PHP. I myself happen to be a PHP programmer (I also program other languages) and have administrated (been the 'mod' or 'admin') of several sites. I know the power, and it feels good to have access to functions that regular users don't. I'm saying this because I think the moderators of this board, in particular effie, mugz and cane2theleft, are closing threads too quickly. Perhaps the thread in question does not comply with the BLUE 110% percent, but I do not think waiting a day or two with closing the thread will be a catastrophy. But yes, moderation of a forum, especially one with tons of users, makes you feel like a god. I have to say though, effie was very willing and helpful recently, so maybe he should be crossed off of the list. I know mugz likes closing threads though.

These last few lines were meant for administrators mostly. The questions in the beginning of the thread I'd really like answered. Perhaps I should've made this into two threads, but I gather the moderators have the power to do so. And then one last thing: I in no way intend to degrade the mods of this site or anything. I think they are doing a fantastic job administrating a site of this size. It's just that sometimes you want to add a question or comment to a thread that you think is really relevant, and then the thread is already closed.

If you have experience being an admin or a mod, you should know that this isn't the place to air your grievances. Please direct further commentary either to staff members directly via PM or the support forum.

All of us encourage people regularly to PM us if they'd like to discuss a thread closure and instead you just started a new thread and rudely called us out publicly instead of addressing the problem through the established channels we have set up for these purposes. If you'd like to discuss individual thread closures, please contact the mod that did so or the senior staff overseeing them. If someone politely contacts me to present a case for why a thread should be reopened, I'll usually reopen it if it's not something that is clearly violating the guidelines unless it's truly unproductive. You can ALWAYS contact the staff to discuss this. When I was a moderator, I reopened threads all the time. My role here typically doesn't consist of moderating anymore, however weekends get really busy with a lot of threads that don't belong on here and it becomes a handful and frustration for the mods to be constantly cleaning up.

I can assure you that none of us feel like gods. Closing threads is annoying and we'd prefer not to. We'd rather spend our time participating in discussion which is how we got to our respective positions but we're passionate about the purpose of this forum and that's why we try our best to keep threads on track and the discussion focused and productive to further the aim of promoting harm reduction.

This is a common effect of benzos, I used to have it happen to me all the time. Took a bunch of pills... feeling pretty sober...look fucking blasted. You won't be able to play it off forever. It's painfully obvious especially if someone knows what to look for.

EDIT: Mods on these forums don't close threads unless they clearly violate a rule. Reposting threads they just closed is 1) probably annoying 2) against the rules. It's not hard to obey the rules here, they are simple and clear. Accusing the volunteer moderation team of being power hungry is pretty laughable.

Being a HR site, it is definetly in the best interest of a mod to close a thread if it violates the rules. All it would take is some fool to stumble along your thread, read it, and then do some dumb stuff because hey, they saw someone else mention it on a forum. Its the internet man, use your head.

And yes, people can tell when you are intoxicated. You cant see yourself thru their eyes. If your eyes are red, your slurring your speech, etc.... It can be pretty obvious. Especially when your messing up but dont notice it yourself.

Yes, only, I don't see how I broke the rules in that particular thread. I have read the BLUA several times.

can2totheleft said:
"Closing threads is annoying and we'd prefer not to"
But we SO often get the "This thread seems to have been answered, so I'm going go to close it now"... That has nothing with the (breaking of the) BLUA and makes no sense if you "prefer not to".

And he goes on saying:
"All of us encourage people regularly to PM us if they'd like to discuss a thread closure and instead you just started a new thread and rudely called us out publicly instead of addressing the problem through the established channels we have set up for these purposes. If you'd like to discuss individual thread closures, please contact the mod that did so or the senior staff overseeing them"

But this is a very accurate description of what I did. I PM'ed the mod who closed the thread, and that did not result in re-opening of the thread because the mod wasn't sure whether or not I broke the rules ("clearly violating the guidelines" does not make a mod doubt). And I didn't call you out "rudely", at least not per intention, which is why I said if you'd rather keep this private you could remove it from this public thread and store it somewhere private, like a PM.

But if you feel I offended you, I apologize, and you are welcome to remove anything admin/thread/closing-related from this thread and leave the original questions and answers to remain.

Yes, only, I don't see how I broke the rules in that particular thread. I have read the BLUA several times.

can2totheleft said:
"Closing threads is annoying and we'd prefer not to"
But we SO often get the "This thread seems to have been answered, so I'm going go to close it now"... That has nothing with the (breaking of the) BLUA and makes no sense if you "prefer not to".

The reason we do this is to prevent the thread from becoming off topic or develop into a lengthy discussion. Take a look at the "state of BDD" sticky - we aim to be a quick q&a forum; we are the only forum AFAIK that encourages people to make individual threads with questions rather than wading through megathreads and getting a generic, rather than personalised, reply. This takes up a lot more work, so we have to try to keep things short and sweet so we can concentrate on ensuring everyone receives a personalised, timely and accurate reply to their queries. I spend literally hours on this forum keeping things running smoothly, as do my fellow mods - if we let threads run and run we simply wouldn't be able to keep up and we would have to go back to telling everyone to read the megathreads/UTFSE rather than replying individually, and I think this would be a great shame.

And he goes on saying:
"All of us encourage people regularly to PM us if they'd like to discuss a thread closure and instead you just started a new thread and rudely called us out publicly instead of addressing the problem through the established channels we have set up for these purposes. If you'd like to discuss individual thread closures, please contact the mod that did so or the senior staff overseeing them"

But this is a very accurate description of what I did. I PM'ed the mod who closed the thread, and that did not result in re-opening of the thread because the mod wasn't sure whether or not I broke the rules ("clearly violating the guidelines" does not make a mod doubt). And I didn't call you out "rudely", at least not per intention, which is why I said if you'd rather keep this private you could remove it from this public thread and store it somewhere private, like a PM.

But if you feel I offended you, I apologize, and you are welcome to remove anything admin/thread/closing-related from this thread and leave the original questions and answers to remain.

You pm'd me about a different thread, and I responded and tried to help, and that was the way things should work. This is not. Sometimes it takes time for us to reply to pms as we are busy moderating the forum!

I apologise for contributing to derailing the thread, but I thought it was important to address these points.

I am going to close this now as it is a prime example of the question being answered but the thread becoming derailed please feel free to pm any one of us or the senior staff if you feel your queries have not been appropriately responded to. We want this forum to work, and we want the members to be happy. Whether you meant to be rude or not, this was not the best place to discuss how you feel about our moderating.

Effie answered a lot of what I was going to add but I wanted to touch on a couple more points. You were referring to the thread that I closed and you certainly did not PM me. If you had, I would've heard you out and elaborated on the reasons for doing so.

The BLUA only covers a very small handful of conduct that is universally banned on the site. Every forum has individual guidelines on what is strictly forbidden and beyond that, each forum has decorum that is expected for the forums to operate smoothly and productively. BDD is intended for short specific questions and answers and so once the purpose of a thread is reached, they are often closed. By doing this, we can have exponentially more individual threads that receive replies whereas the focus forums that operate with mega threads have lengthy, on-going discussion and individual inquiries often get overlooked and people get frustrated that their topics don't get any attention. The new BDD model implemented within the last 6 months and ever-developing seeks to address this by allowing people to have their own threads but if some people's threads are allowed to carry on and develop into lengthier discussion, then more of people's quick q+a threads will get ignored and fall off the first page.

If you had simply read the links promoted at the top of this page, all of this would have been explained and had you contacted me AT ALL, I would've happily discussed any and all of this with you instead of needlessly having me devote space and time to doing so in your thread.

There are 2 BASIC requirements for a thread to stay open here - it needs to have SOME kind of harm reduction and have application to people beyond the individual. If it is something so specific as to only pertain to the OP, then it doesn't belong in the community. If something doesn't have any harm reduction value, it simply doesn't fit within the purpose of this forum and allowing those threads all the time will greatly detract from the purpose of promoting harm reduction. There are several other large drug forums out there that do not have the focus on HR that BL does and they would be better suited to a lot of the discussion that we receive that gets closed.

EDIT:

On a side note, to quote multiple people, you can click the little icon that looks like a piece of paper next to the quote button to have multiple posts quoted. You can further edit each quote down to individual statements you'd like to reference rather than using quotation marks like you did and having to copy and paste